Fly over farm country and you see two patterns: where people live, and how the land is divided. Both come from history and culture as much as from the land, and both connect to the kinds of farming you have met.
Key idea
Rural settlements are clustered (homes grouped in a village, fields around it), dispersed (farmhouses spread out, each on its own land) or linear (homes strung along a road, river or canal). Land is divided by metes and bounds (natural features and distances), the township-and-range grid, or long lots (narrow strips running back from a river).
| Survey system | How it works | Where in North America |
|---|---|---|
| Metes and bounds | Boundaries follow natural features and measured distances: "from the oak tree to the creek…" | The original thirteen colonies and lands settled from them |
| Township and range (the Public Land Survey System) | A grid of townships 6 miles square, each split into 36 sections of 1 square mile (640 acres) | Most land west of the Appalachians, starting with Ohio |
| Long lots | Narrow lots fronting a river, running far back from it | French settlements along the St. Lawrence River and in Louisiana |
Why it works
Each system fit a moment. Early colonists marked land by what they could see. After independence, the Land Ordinance of 1785 had the new government survey its western lands into squares before selling them, so plots could be described and sold quickly. French settlers gave each family a strip of riverbank, because the river was the road. You can still see these patterns from the air: square fields in Iowa, irregular ones in Virginia, ribbon fields in Québec.
Worked example: Count the acres
A township has 36 sections. How many acres is a quarter section, and how many acres is the whole township?
- One section is 1 square mile = 640 acres.
- A quarter section: 640 ÷ 4 = 160 acres.
- A township: 36 × 640 = 23,040 acres.
Answer: 160 acres; 23,040 acres.
Worked example: Read the landscape
In an area, farmhouses sit far apart, each on its own square farm, along roads that meet at right angles every mile. Name the settlement pattern and the survey system.
- Houses far apart, each on its own farm: dispersed.
- Square farms and roads every mile: the township-and-range grid.
Answer: Dispersed settlement on a township-and-range survey.
Common mistake
Thinking square farm fields are natural. Township-and-range squares come from the U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785; older Eastern lands follow metes and bounds, and French areas long lots. The land did not make the squares; a law did.